/ 



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Roanoke College. 



Inauguration of President. 



iSyg. 



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ADDRESSES 



AT THE 



INAUGURATION OF 



JULIUS D. DREHER 



AS 



PRESIDENT OF ROANOKE COLLEGE, 



SALEM, VIRGINIA. 



October 17, i 879. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES. 









Prfnteti for tf)e C^olUgF. 
1879. 






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CHARTERED 1853 



1*> 

ol 



OPENING 



OF THE 



BITTLE MEMORIAL HALL, 

October 17, 1879, 



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ilHusic. 

PRAYER, By Rev. Prof. R. C. Holland, of the Faculty. 

JHusic. 

MEMORIAL ADDRESS, on the Life and Work of 
President Bittle, 

By Prof. S. C. Wells, Ph.D., of the Faculty. 

Mum. 

ADDRESS — " The Library," 

By Rev. Chas. P. Krauth, D.D., LL.D., of Philadelphia, 

BENEDICTION, By Rev. W. E. Hubbert, of Virginia. 



* This building for the Library of Roanoke College was erected by the voluntary contri- 
butions of friends of the institution. The order of exercises at the formal opening of the Bittle 
Memorial is given here, in order that the references to it in the following addresses may be 
intelligible. 



INAUGURATION 



OF 



Prof. Julius D. Dreher, 



AS 



THIRD PRESIDENT OF ROANOKE COLLEGE, 
October 17, 1879,^ 



irbir of ¥r3rn$^$. 



Presiding Officer : 

Rev. Prof. S. A. REPASS, D.D., of the Trustees. 



PRAYER, By Rev. Prof. W. B. Yonce, Ph.D. 

CONGRATULATORY ADDRESS, 

By Chas. p. Krauth, D.D., LL D. 

INAUGURATING ADDRESS, By J. J. Moorman, M.D. 

Mn&it. 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, By President Dreher. 

BENEDICTION, By Ex-President T. W. Dosh, D.D. 



Congratulatory Address, 



BY 



PROF. CHARLES P. KRAUTH, D.D., LL.D. 



Vice-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. 



ADDRESS. 



Though it may seem egotistic, I cannot begin to offer my 
congratulations at this high festival without congratulating my- 
self that the honor is mine of representing so sacred a cause as 
that of Christian nurture, on a soil so hallowed as that of my 
native State. It is a soil hallowed by the ashes which are the 
treasures of our Nation, the object of an undiminished common 
love and reverence through the wildest storms of division, in 
which the dead remained the sole bond of the living. But to 
me it is a soil specially hallowed as the resting-place of all my 
earliest ancestry. My father's father and mother lie in their 
long rest amid the wild beauties of this Eastern Virginia — Old 
Virginia, as we love to call it. My mother's parents sleep in 
the sunny valley of the Shenandoah ; and in Western Virginia, 
knowing not my loss, I was borne, an infant, from the last 
pressure of that mother's loving arms, to be taken to them no 
more, until "the day break and the shadows flee away." The 
elect Virginian never falls from the grace of a loving pride in 
the State of his nativity, and one bond of his devotion is that in 
no land is cultivated intellect prized more than in Virginia. 
The intensity of aristocratic feeling, the boast of ancestry, the 
pride of family, so marked as traits of Virginia, nowhere more 
than in Virginia completely yield to the claims of intellectual 
preeminence. Her aristocracy is but the column ; her great 
minds, highly cultured, however lowly may have been the 
original position of their possessors, are the statue with which 



8 

her admiration crowns the shaft. The greatest of her sons 
next after Washington in political distinction, directed that on 
his monumental stone, in the record of that by which he most 
desired to live in the memory of men, — last of all, as if it were 
the crown of the whole, — should be inscribed that he was 
''father of the University of Virginia; " and in this he was true 
to the noblest pride of the class which has given Virginia her 
place in the history of the world. 

I offer to the Board of Trustees of Roanoke College sin- 
cere congratulations that they have chosen and secured one so 
well fitted to fill the highest office in their gift. What your first 
President was, has been fittingly portrayed by the eulogist of 
the morning, who has vivified the lofty praise he awarded, and 
made it doubly valuable by the just discrimination with which, 
lovingly and reverentially, he set forth in faithfulness the de- 
fects of Dr. Bittle, — which were but his imperfect virtues, 
throwing the rest into higher relief. The term of your second 
President, Dr. Dosh, was brief, yet long enough to confirm in 
new relations the profound confidence and hearty aff"ection in 
which he is so wisely and justly held, and by which, on his 
withdrawal from the Presidency, he was called to the loftiest 
work of the loftiest of professions — the teaching of those 
who are to teach others the truth of God. The very 
felicity of the earlier choices of the Board has raised in the 
public mind anticipations easy to disappoint, hard to fill. But 
the public seals with its acclamation the act of the Trustees. It 
recognizes the fact that they have chosen one worthy of the line 
of his precedents — a man who breathes the same spirit, who is 
strong in the same principles, full of enlightened earnestness 
for the same great work — the third strand of such a threefold 
cord as is not quickly broken. 

I congratulate the Professors that the presidency of the 
Institution is committed to one in the choice of whom they 
so heartily concur. They receive to their headship one who 
sat at their feet, as a pupil, and there won their early love and 
respect. He knows them, and they know him thoroughly as a 
man and as a worker in education. They welcome to his high 



position one who understands their desires and shares them. 
They bid godspeed to one who has shown great skill and in- 
domitable energy in retaining what has been won by Roanoke 
College, in giving perpetuity to all that already has made for 
her a position among the Institutions of our land, and tends, 
with each year of her life, to lift her yet higher. 

I congratulate the Alumni that from their number has 
been chosen the man who takes the place of highest distinction 
in the gift of their Alma Mater. She honors them in honoring 
him. They have a new bond of attachment to an Institution 
to which they owe so much ; a new incentive for earnest effort 
that her power of good may be enlarged ; and that with a yet 
prouder gratitude they may, as sons, make their boast of a 
mother ever growing more worthy of the confidence and rev- 
erence with which they regard her. 

I congratulate the students that they are placed under a 
rule which he who wears it will so use that he will share the 
distinction of one of Europe's greatest teachers, who was 
known as '^the student's friend." They have a President who 
will win their love without forfeiting their respect, and who 
brings to the activity of youth the ripeness of practical judg- 
ment which belongs to later years. 

I congratulate the citizens of Salem, on an event which 
tends to strengthen an institution in whose prosperity they have 
so vital a stake. An institution of learning like this brings notalone 
financial benefits to the place ; not only increases the value of 
property in and around it, and stimulates every genuine business 
interest ; but it gives to the name of your city wide renown, 
makes it the center of a vast circle of influence, and brings 
education of a high order to your very doors. This it does for 
you not only without money and without price, but adds to the 
money whose circulation gives impulse to your community. It 
brings you a priceless gift, and pays you for taking it ; it offers 
treasures for which no money could pay, and gives you with 
them the treasure of the bank and of the mint ; it does the greater 
thing, which ought to be done, and does not leave the lesser 
other undone. Roanoke College insures a higher standard of 



lO 

cultivation and intelligence in the community, exalts its social 
tone, ennobles the wealth of the rich and dignifies the poverty 
of the poor, and brings into your homes and to your hearths 
pure religion in her spotless white, wearing the wreath with 
which Art, Literature and Science have crowned her as their 
queen. 

A Christian college is one of the highest benefactions which 
a gracious Providence can bestow upon any place ; and the 
ungrateful place which does not foster it, seals its own con- 
demnation. 

I congratulate the noble State which is the theater of the 
scenes of to-day. Her glories have already been passed in 
review before you, in the magic movement of the eloquence of 
one of her favorite sons. The future of Virginia may look dark 
— rent and broken, as she has been, in the saddest conflict which 
ever brought grief to the heart of nations, and distracted, as she 
is now, by thinly veiled suggestions, unworthy of her great 
name, to which a blind, self-destroying selfishness may give a 
doubtful temporary triumph. To those who think of her in her 
highest prosperity and her loftiest elevation above the sordid, 
the mean, the dubious, — a mother in the nation rather than a 
daughter, giving States as a dower of our common country, — it 
may seem now as it seemed when the foundation of the second 
Temple was laid before the eyes of the ancient men who had 
seen the first. Overcome with memories of the past and fears 
of the future, they wept with a loud voice. To the old men 
who knew the Virginia of old, it seems as if there were glories 
clean gone forever — the majesty and token of a mighty pres- 
ence which can come back no more. But that awful and tender 
voice which makes itself heard above the din of conflicts, the 
sobbings of distress, the voice of a Providence as gracious as it 
is mysterious, is declaring, in tokens too manifest to be mis- 
taken, that the glory of the latter temple shall be greater than 
that of the former. Let Christian culture, widespread and thor- 
ough, bring to Virginia the consciousness of her divine endow- 
ments ! Let it awaken her people to a sense of what God has 
put into their heart and hands to make nature around them 



1 1 



tributary to man ! Let it teach her to be true to all her gifts 
and all her covenants, true to her great mission — industrious, 
untiring, self- developing, — and the free Virginia of the future 
will as far transcend herself as in her palmiest days she tran- 
scended other States! She has been the nurse of individual 
greatness, the nurse of statesmen and of soldiers, of orators, 
jurists, diplomatists and scholars. She will become the mother 
of a people too great to need heroes, too prosperous to be 
solicitous about place, too intelligent for the falsehood of the 
demagogue, too fixed in principle for the lures of a swindling 
policy. The headstone of the new temple shall yet be brought 
forth, and a regenerated people, full of gratitude to God, shall 
unite in the shout, "Grace, grace unto it!" 

Nor can I withhold my congratulations from our church in 
the South, on the new evidences of vitality given by an institu- 
tion so healthy and promising as Roanoke College — an institu- 
tion which has already done so great a work in training men for 
the service of the church, both as intelligent laymen and as well- 
educated clergymen. The benefits of the institution are indeed 
open to all Christendom, as freely, as fully, as cordially, given 
to one as to another — to those who are not of us, as to our own 
sons. But the history of Roanoke College has brought our 
church, especially, though not exclusively, in the South, into 
peculiar relations to it, into peculiar activity for it, into peculiar 
responsibility for it ; and just in proportion as the church has 
been faithful to these claims, has she been blest in and by the 
prosperity of the College. Not by any restriction of its plan, 
but by the providential surroundings of its life, Roanoke Col- 
lege will be a most efficient co-worker with the important theo- 
logical school here established, and with all the interests of our 
church in the South ; but it will not be embarrassed, but rather 
aided, in its plans and hopes by any amount of service, however 
large, which the whole religious community, of whatever name, 
or the whole community outside of all denominations, may be 
willing to receive from its bounteous and impartial hand. It is 
founded by one part of the church, under whose special care it 
rests, and which assumes for it that well-defined guardianship 



12 



which is needful to the very life of an institution ; but that 
church holds the trust for a common good. She takes the heavier 
burden, but seeks in bearing it to do a work beyond herself. 
She desires to be only the custodian of common benefits, the 
disinterested dispenser of blessings to all who are willing to 
share them. 

Nor do I feel that I am making my range of congratulation 
too wide, when I claim that our whole land has an interest in 
that which tends, as the inauguration of this day tends, to the 
strengthening of the ties by which its great portions are knit 
together. When I look at the every-day politics of our land my 
heart often grows sick and desponding — the mere partisans are 
so much alike in their bitterness and mischievous character. 
They belong to the two parts of the one party of selfishness. 
Our hope is in our people ; and there is no hope in them, but 
as Christian culture gives them intelligence to discern the 
right, and fixed principles to maintain it. To have genuine 
education, in its true uses, to have it saved from its abuses, is, 
under God, our national stronghold. Our rightly educated 
men are the great powers in binding our land together. The 
definite religious influence of Roanoke College, its hold upon 
the confidence of the South, and its bonds of amity with the 
North, in which it has sought and found so many of its most 
generous friends, give an assurance that it can help and will 
help toward that happy consummation in which all sectional 
strife, mistrust and hatred shall be forever buried. Loving my 
native South dearly, because I know it so well, loving my 
adopted home, the North, so dearly, because I know it so well, 
I have no prayer for my country more fervent, than that all its 
parts shall love each other, work hand in hand for the common 
weal, stand shoulder to shoulder against a common woe ; and that 
this College and. all institutions of Christian nurture. North and 
South, shall train their sons in the pure faith, that in the claims 
of a common culture, of a common Christianity and of a com- 
mon nationality. North and South are not rivals but sisters, 
the loving children of a common mother, for whom it is their 
glory to live, for whom they would be willing to die. 



Taking the view which I have presented of the meaning of 
the scene in which we participate this day, it may well be con- 
ceived with what deep sympathy and joy I give voice to the 
congratulation which from every side greets the President elect. 
He has been honored by an unsought choice — the choice of 
those who knew him well, and made because they knew him 
well. He has been honored by the enthusiastic indorsement 
of that official choice — given by every friend of the College, 
by its Faculty, its Students, its Alumni, its well-wishers, through 
our whole broad land. The position itself is one of honor. 
But neither because of the honor of the vocation, nor of the 
place, do I offer him my congratulations. I congratulate him 
on the work and the opportunity, not on what the presidency 
brings to him, but on what he can render it ; not for what he 
gets, but for what he can give. He has shown where the mantle 
of his revered and beloved instructor and colleague has fallen — 
the generous impulse of labor, the modest indefatigability, the 
conscientious persistence, the wonderful success. His position 
as a leader in the work of education will enable him to give large 
impulse to that which gives impulse to the world. He has gone 
forth, and wherever he has gone he has inspired confidence, 
and has justified it. Roanoke College is full of vital power, and 
its pulse beats at its full in the heart of the man of your choice. 
Be faithful to him as he will be to you ; be faithful to the mean- 
ing of the commission with which you have invested him. 
Then, not in vain will your aspirations take the form of suppli- 
cations to the Source of all blessings ; your prayers will be 
fulfilled ; Roanoke College will enlarge its influence in growing 
degree; it will lay ever richer gifts at the feet of Virginia, of the 
church, of the South and of our land ; it will reach the amplest 
measure of its possibilities, till the most sanguine shall confess 
that beyond their most eager anticipations God has blessed it. 
Its long future shall be the time of ever springing, ever ripen- 
ing, ever garnering harvests, and its field be more and more the 
world. 



INAUGURATING ADDRESS, 



BY 



J. J. MOORMAN, M.D. 



Of the Trustees. 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. Dreher: — 

It has been made my pleasant duty, in the name and on 
behalf of the Trustees of Roanoke College, to greet you as 
President-elect thereof, in the presence of the assembly now 
convened to honor your inauguration into that office. It gives 
us pleasure, sir, to have one of our own Alttmni to preside over 
this institution. 

It has rarely happened in the history of colleges, that one 
so young as yourself has been called to a position of such dig- 
nity and importance in the government of such institutions. 
Our departure from the custom of selecting old, or older men 
than yourself, for such a position, cannot be construed other- 
wise than as complimentary to you; and especially as the 
selection, in this case, is based upon a long personal acquaint- 
ance with you by those who have made the selection — an ac- 
quaintance for a sufficient time to enable us to place a proper, 
estimate upon your acquirements, your energy and administra- 
tive ability, successfully to discharge the important duties con- 
ferred upon you. That your administration of the affairs of the 
College will be so wise, discreet, and energetic, as not only to 
preserve the institution in its present high position before the 
country, but still further to promote its success in public esti- 
mation, and still further to extend its usefulness, is the hope 
and the expectation of the Trustees and your other numerous 
friends. 

But while, sir, our greetings to you as President of this 
institution are pleasant, under the circumstances that Divine 



i8 



Providence has inaugurated, the occasion necessarily forces 
upon our memory (as it will upon the memory of all that sur- 
round us) melancholy recollections of him who was your prede- 
cessor — \.h.Q founder, the father, the first and highly-honored 
president of this institution for more than twenty years. Who 
among those that now hear me do not remember, with feelings 
of the highest regard and respect, yea, with feelings of love 
and veneration, the lamented President Bittle ? and who is not 
prepared to shed a memorial tear sacred to the virtues of his 
head and his heart ? To reflect upon the blameless yet ener- 
getic and useful life, or rather the life-work, of Dr. Bittle, is 
pleasure mixed with and deeply solemnized by pain. 

No one knew him better than you, sir ; and no one, perhaps, 
had more fully learned to love him socially, or more fully to 
confide in the prudence, energy, impartiality, and wisdom, with 
which for so many years he successfully conducted the affairs of 
this College. So far, sir, as example goes, so far as demonstra- 
tive wisdom points out the path which others may safely and 
usefully tread, so far, sir, are you fortunate in having had such 
a predecessor in office ; and especially are you fortunate in 
having been for many years in close association with him as 
pupil and teacher, under his immediate guidance and influence, 
and enjoying, as we are aware you did, a large share of his con- 
fidence and esteem. Thus trained with him and under him, and 
fully appreciating, as we are sure you do, the high qualifications 
that gave him veneration, distinction, and success, you can err 
.but little, sir, in your official, social, and religious life, by having 
constantly before you, as an example, the life-work of this 
noble and venerated man. 

But while the memory of President Bittle will ever be 
cherished for the noble work he accomplished in building up 
Roanoke College, the friends of the institution can never forget 
the merits, or fail to award the meed of praise and honor, that 
is due to the able and self-sacrificing corps of Professors by 
whom he was surrounded in prosecuting his great work, or fail 
to accord to them that gratitude which is their legitimate due. 
These co-laborers, like their noble head, stood by the institution 
in weal and in woe ; and in all its difficulties and trials they, 



19 

like faithful mariners in a tossing ship, stood steadily to the 
helm, or adjusted the rigging — never despairing in the storm, 
and never relaxing their watch and ward in the placid calm ; 
but, steady as the needle to the pole, held on with never-falter- 
ing energy, yea, with self-abnegation and a laudable ambition, 
to secure success for this nursling of their common affection. 
And who will say that these efforts of President and Professors 
have not been successful — yea, eminently successful ? 

We behold in Roanoke College an institution begun, con- 
tinued, and maturing, into great public respect and usefulness, 
even to the extent of making itself a power in the land ; — and all 
this accomplished through the will and indomitable energy of 
its President and his corps of self-sacrificing Professors, some 
of whom are still laboring most usefully and honorably in the 
harness of the institution — and all these labors ever Sind alone 
dependent for reward upon their own legitimate results — with- 
out any permanent endowment to fall back upon,* or aught that 
was not achieved by personal energy and associated individual 
effort. When we look back upon the results that have been 
achieved by such efforts in building up this College to its present 
respectable standard, we may well question whether in our 
broad land any stronger evidence can be given of the successful 
triumph of combined individual effort to accomplish a great and 
noble object. Nor should this great success fail to excite a 
laudable ambition in all who are to be connected with the future 
history of the institution, to urge it forward to higher attain- 
ments in public estimation and into a still wider field of public 
usefulness. 

Of the important duties that are devolved upon you, sir, 
as President of this institution, I need say but little. Your 
long residence within college walls, as student and Professor, 
has made you far more familiar with such duties than I can 
claim to be. I will not withhold the observation, however, that 
an energetic and ever-faithful administration of the laws and 
regulations of a college, is not all that is required of one that 
would preside most successfully over such an institution. 

* Several bequests, in reversion, have been made to the College, but these are not 
yet available. 



20 



The President of a college should never cease to regard 
himself as standing in loco parentis to the pupils under his 
control, nor fail to give them good reasons to know that 
while, like a judicious father, he will have the established laws 
and regulations honorably obeyed, nevertheless he may be 
undoubtingly looked to for fair and impartial justice, always 
tempered with kindness and amenity. Dignity, fairness, and im- 
partiality, with amenity of temper and manner, are valuable fac- 
tors in the government of young gentlemen in college, and are 
very valuable in constituting the higher qualifications for the 
performance of such duty. 

Love should always be a governing principle alike in the 
family and in the college. Wholesome discipline often quite as 
much demands a judicious forbearance as it does the stern and 
unrelaxing penalty for the violation of law. In the college, as 
in the family, the most effective and beneficent government is 
that which appeals to the affections and manly honor of the 
youthful mind and heart, rather than to the stern exactions (with- 
out reasonable modification or excuse), for violations of pre- 
scribed rules. 

A most important element in college government is the 
conservation of the morals of students. In vain, and worse 
than in vain, are high scholastic attainments, if they be not con- 
nected with high conservative morality. The government, 
then, of every literary institution, should be so directed as to 
throw every possible safeguard around the morals of its stu- 
dents ; while constant motives are presented to stimulate a 
laudable ambition in an honorable struggle for higher and 
higher attainments in solid learning. 

And now, sir, in behalf of the Trustees of this Institution, 
I deliver into your hands the Charter and By-Laws of the Col- 
lege, and proclaim you, in the name of those I represent. Presi- 
dent of Roanoke College ; earnestly trusting that the Great Ruler 
of events will make your administration redound greatly to the 
benefit of all pupils that may come under your care, and to a 
continued increase of the institution in public favor and general 
usefulness. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 



BY 



PRESIDENT DREHER. 



ADDRESS. 



Appropriate honors have to-day been paid to the memory 
of the first President of Roanoke College. What more fitting 
introduction to the thoughts of this hour, than to impress the 
importance of education by recalling the memorable words with 
which he began his inaugural address, twenty-six years ago ? 

"The most momentous duty of one generation to another 
is its education. The preceding generation has it in its power to 
determine whether the succeeding one shall be intelligent, 
moral, energetic, and benevolent, or ignorant, depraved, indolent, 
and selfish. Each of these opposite characteristics is mainly 
the result of the educational arrangements employed. It remains 
for us to determine, before we close the career of life, whether 
we will educate our successors to be better men than we are ; 
better qualified to incur the responsibilities of life, to possess 
superior wisdom and a more refined humanity." 

That " momentous duty " is an ever-present one. With 
us, it is one of ever-increasing importance. For, if we reflect 
upon the wonderful growth of our country, the heterogeneous 
character of its population, and the probability that young men 
now students in our colleges may live to see that population 
increase to 100,000,000, and the United States become the 
largest English-speaking nation in the world, we shall catch 
some faint idea of the magnitude of the work to be done by 
our educational institutions. And if we next consider the con- 



24 

flict waging between religion and science, between true philos- 
ophy and materialism, between Christianity and infidelity, 
between constitutional government and communism, between 
capital and labor, between benevolence and selfishness, we shall 
better appreciate the importance of right aims and methods in 
a work which is destined to exert a mighty influence on the for- 
tunes of the Republic and the Christian civilization of the 
world. 

Education is a theme endowed with perpetual life. Dis- 
cussion succeeds discussion as age follows age, and yet this 
question loses none of its vitality. It is agitating the public 
mind, not only in America, — where circumstances of recent 
settlement, rapid growth, the forming of society in new States 
out of many divergent elements, and the large measure of in- 
dividual freedom enjoyed, seem favorable to unsettled opinions 
on educational topics, — but in Europe as well, where fixed civil 
and ecclesiastical systems lead us to expect a satisfactory solu- 
tion of a question upon which scholars, statesmen, and philoso- 
phers have for centuries bestowed thoughtful attention. To 
the superficial observer, this unwearying discussion of the same 
subject may produce a feeling of discouragement ; but to the 
student of human progress, it is the foundation of hope for the 
intellectual and moral elevation of mankind. For this interest 
in education is the recognition given by each generation of its 
responsibility to the succeeding one, and its desire to ascertain 
the best methods of discharging that obligation. It is, there- 
fore, a matter of congratulation that our own age and country 
are conspicuous in no one thing more than in the investigation 
of the principles that underlie the successful application of ed- 
ucational theories. 

As this occasion bears witness to the interest felt in this 
subject, so the occasion itself seems to prescribe its own theme 
of discourse. Custom and duty alike enjoin that this hour 
should be devoted to the subject of Education. I shall en- 
deavor, therefore, to present some thoughts on Education as a 
Preparation for Useful Living, 



20 



The popular idea that education is acquired only during 
the period spent in schools, colleges, and universities, is too 
narrow. ''Education," says Paley, "in the most extensive 
sense of that word, may comprehend every preparation that is 
made in our youth for the sequel of our lives." ** Education," 
says another eminent authority, '* does not mean merely read- 
ing and writing, or any degree, however considerable, of mere 
intellectual instruction. It is, in its widest sense, a process 
which extends from the commencement to the termination of 
existence." It will be necessary, however, to use the word in a 
restricted sense, in discussing the part to be performed by the 
college in this work of preparation for life. 

There is another inadequate idea of education that restricts 
it wholly to the training of the intellect. As man is possessed 
of moral faculties which are to determine the use to be made of 
his intellectual attainments, it follows that there should be a 
moral element in education. And as man has a religious nature 
closely allied to his moral nature, it follows that there should be 
a religious element in education. ''Bythe word education," 
says that distinguished educator, Horace Mann, *' I mean much 
more than the ability to read, write, and keep common accounts. 
I comprehend, under this noble word, such a training of the 
body as will build it up with robustness and vigor ; ^ ^ ^ such 
a cultivation of the intellect as shall enable it to discern those 
permanent and mighty laws which pervade all parts of the cre- 
ated universe, whether material or spiritual ; ^ ^ ^ and, finally, 
such a culture of our moral affections and religious susceptibil- 
ities as, in the course of nature and Providence, shall lead to 
a subjection or conformity of all our appetites, propensities, and 
sentiments to the will of heaven." " How to live } That," says 
Herbert Spencer, *' is the essential question for us. Not how to 
live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense ; 
how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of our- 
selves and others ; how to live completely. And this being the 
great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great 
thing which education is to teach. To prepare us for complete 
living, is the function which education has to discharge; and 



26 



the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, 
to judge in what degree it discharges such function." These 
views are in accord with the aim and teachings of Roanoke Col- 
lege. By education, we understand not merely the acquisition 
of sufficient knowledge for the discharge of the ordinary affairs 
of life ; but also such a discipline and drawing out of the intel- 
lectual powers, training of the moral character, and cultivation 
of the religious affections, as shall best fit a man for the faithful 
and efficient performance of his duties to his country and 
humanity, to himself and his God. 

I. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

Intellectual education has two objects — discipline and 
knowledge. Discipline, the more important, is acquired by a 
course of training ; knowledge, by accumulating facts. The 
primary aim in intellectual education is to draw out, develop, 
and strengthen the mental faculties. It is not its design to 
furnish the mind with facts, however useful these may be ; but 
rather to train the intellect, by a course of study, in those 
branches which will best symmetrically develop its various fac- 
ulties. The mind must be trained to observe, to reflect, to 
reason, to judge, to investigate, to originate. Hence, education 
is not so much the acquisition of knowledge as a preparation to 
acquire and use it with facility. No store-house of tools and 
materials will make a man a mechanic ; no more will the mere 
filling of the store-house of memory make a man an educated 
gentleman. As, in the one case, the ability to use tools skill- 
fully upon the materials constitutes the mechanic ; so, in the 
other, the ability to use our mental powers in appropriating the 
materials of knowledge, constitutes the educated man. A col- 
lege should be an intellectual gymnasium, not an intellectual 
store-house. This has been the view of leading educators since 
the days of Aristotle, who taught that ''the intellect is per- 
fected, not by knowledge, but by exercise." 

The college curriculufn of four years must accordingly include 
such studies as are best adapted to the development of the mind 



27 

and the training of its faculties ; the acquisition of that knowl- 
edge which is necessary for this purpose ; and also of that 
discipline which will place all other knowledge within the stu- 
dent's reach. It is not the design of a college course to furnish 
professional training, but to give that education which should 
be the common basis not only of every profession and of special 
training in technical schools, but of liberal culture, as well in 
private as in public life, as well in industrial as in literary 
pursuits. 

Studies. 

Our next inquiry ^^is to'ascertain what studies will best pro- 
mote the immediate object aimed at in collegiate education, and 
best prepare for useful living when the college has done its 
work. 

In education we have to deal with mind and matter^ ideas 
and things. Mind and its relations on the one hand, and mat- 
ter and its relations on the other, divide the studies of the 
college course into two groups: viz.; (i) Literature and its 
kindred branches ; and (2) Mathematics and its kindred branches. 
The studies of the first division introduce the student into the 
world of humanity ; those of the second give him the mastery 
over the world of matter. 

On the question of the relative importance of the studies 
embraced in these divisions, scholars are divided into humanita- 
rians and utilitarians ; the one party claiming that linguistic and 
metaphysical studies impart the best mental discipline, give the 
best preparation for life, and insure a larger degree of influence 
over our fellow-men ; the other party as strenuously urging that 
the mathematical and physical sciences are of equal disciplinary 
value, and of far more practical use in life. This controversy 
(which we may not follow further), beginning in the days of 
August Hermann Francke, the founder of the German Real- 
schulen, has been carried on with varying interest for nearly two 
centuries, but at no time with such earnestness as in this coun- 
try within the last half century, the splendid achievements in 
the Natural Sciences giving impetus to the zeal, and weight to 



28 



the arguments of the advocates of the '' New Education." The 
result of this controversy thus far has been to establish the 
Natural Sciences in public favor, and consequently to give them 
a place, by no means obscure, in the curriculum of our Ameri- 
can colleges. 

The liberal education, then, that is to fit for the highest 
type of useful living, must include the study of Languages and 
the Mental Sciences, as a preparation for our communication with 
each other, as social and moral beings, and our communion with 
the past for its lessons of wisdom and experience ; and also the 
study of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences as a preparation 
for that mastery over the material world which will not only 
contribute to our well-being, but enable us to add somewhat to 
the comfort and happiness of our fellow-men. 

The English Language. 

Language is our first intellectual want. It is the means of 
communicating our thoughts to others. And, as our communi- 
cation with each other is the most powerful incentive to con- 
stant activity in adding to our stores of knowledge, language, 
which makes this communion possible, must ever hold the first 
place in any scheme of liberal education. And first among 
languages, the vernacular. With the young Frenchman, French 
first ; with the Teuton, German first ; and with the Briton or 
American, English first. I do not mean first in point of time, 
but first in importance among studies. And I do not mean 
such an elementary knowledge of English as will enable the 
student simply to understand his language, spoken and written, 
but the ability himself to speak and write it with accuracy, if 
not with elegance ; and a fair acquaintance with its copious 
vocabulary, its beauty of diction, wealth of literature, its philo- 
logical connections and the historical influences which have 
brought it to its present high state of perfection. It must be con- 
fessed that the critical study of English is sadly neglected in 
many of our institutions of learning. The complaint made by 
Locke, nearly two centuries ago, applies to our own times : ** If 



29 

any one among us have a facility or purity more than ordinary 
in his mother tongue, it is owing to chance, or his genius, or 
anything, rather than to his education or any care of his teacher." 
Our language is not well enough understood to be appre- 
ciated. Persons who travel abroad before they know their own 
country, often acquire foreign tastes and disparage the institu- 
tions and achievements of their native land ; so, many of our 
students no sooner peep into the grammars and lexicons of for- 
eign languages, than they wish to neglect those of their native 
tongue. If a man, after tracing his genealogy back to a renowned 
ancestry, should thenceforth pay court to his distant kinsmen, 
though of royal blood, to the neglect of his own mother, he 
would be guilty of base ingratitude. It is not otherwise with 
the student of English, who, after becoming acquainted with 
the noble lineage of his own language, would thenceforth neglect 
his mother tongue to pay assiduous attention to distant linguis- 
tic ancestors, though polished by Grecian taste and French 
accomplishments, and enriched by Roman culture and German 
philosophy. 

Cicero, who was himself an accomplished Greek scholar, 
showed his appreciation of foreign study by sending his son to 
Athens to pursue a course of philosophy under the renowned 
Cratippus. But he also indicated the high value which he 
placed upon his own language by giving this advice to his son: 
"Join Latin with your Greek. Your improvement in Latin is 
what I chiefly desire." And so may American students be ad- 
vised to "join English with their Latin and Greek. Their im- 
provement in English should be their chief desire ; " for, as 
they will use this language in conversation and public speaking, 
in their business affairs, and in transmitting their thoughts to 
their cotemporaries and successors, it will be either the medium 
of using learning to advantage, or the instrument of betraying 
ignorance to their shame. Through English, as a medium, 
will they acquire other languages and a knowledge of the 
various branches of polite literature; and the better the me- 
dium is understood, the more easily will this object be accom- 
plished. Nor should it be overlooked that in this matchless 



30 

tongue will be their noblest literary pleasures ; through it, if 
at all, will they win their literary triumphs ; and to its friendly 
guardianship must they intrust the record of whatever may be 
said or done by them, worthy of commemoration. 

Ancient and Modern Languages, 

The study of Greek and Latin is invaluable. One of its 
highest advantages is the cultivation of the habit of attention, 
without which it is impossible to acquire accurate scholarship 
in any department of knowledge. The constant choice of 
words to convey the meaning of a foreign author, cultivates the 
discriminating faculty. The translation of thought from one 
language into another is itself an invigorative exercise, which 
strengthens the mind, adds to the student's vocabulary, and 
cultivates the habit of precision in the use of words. The 
highly abstract science of grammar may be more readily mas- 
tered in these faultless models whose forms are fixed, than in a 
language in daily use, and, consequently, in a state of constant 
change. Not only is the Greek and Latin syntax the basis of 
that of all modern languages, including English, but so large a 
part of our own tongue has been derived from the languages of 
Greece and Rome, that it is not possible to master English 
without a knowledge of these ancient sources. ''Socially and 
educationally," says Max Miiller, '' I think the study of Latin 
and Greek is of the highest importance." 

We speak of these as the dead languages ; but they can 
never die. In the words of Hobbes, they '' have put off flesh 
and blood to put on immortality." They are destined to sit on 
thrones forever in the republic of literature. They have 
wielded an influence so powerful for two thousand years, that 
the acquisitions of our own times cannot be fully appreciated 
without a knowledge of the sources from which the stream of 
modern literature took its rise. " Literature," says Bishop 
Temple, ''can only be studied thoroughly by going to its 
source. Modern theology, modern philosophy, modern law, 
modern history, modern poetry, are never quite understood 



31 

unless we begin with their ancient counterparts." '' Expel 
Greek and Latin," says the great Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, ''and 
you confine the views of existing generations to themselves and 
their immediate predecessors ; you will cut off so many centu- 
ries of the world's experience, and place us in the same state as 
if the human race had first come into existence in the year 
1500." It is in this respect especially — by bringing us into 
contact with the fountains of literature — that the study of Greek 
and Latin is to be preferred to that of any other foreign lan- 
guage, ancient or modern, living or dead. John Stuart Mill 
bears the following testimony : '' Without knowing the lan- 
guage of a people, we never really know their thoughts, their 
feelings, and their type of character ; and unless we do possess 
this knowledge of some other people than ourselves, we remain 
to the day of our death with our intellects only half expanded." 
And Charles the Fifth declared that *' a man is just as many 
times a man as he has language with which to express himself." 
Lord Brougham was so profoundly impressed with the enno- 
bling influence of the ancient classics, that he expressed the 
conviction that ** a young man whose mind has once been well 
imbued with general learning and has acquired classical pro- 
pensities, will never sink into a mere drudge." 

The intimate connection between the Greek and Latin 
languages and Christianity, entitles them to a prominent place 
in the curriculum of every Christian college. On this point 
the opinion of Wm. E. Gladstone is emphatic : " Modern 
European civilization, from the middle ages downward, is the 
compound of two great factors : the Christian religion for 
the spirit of man, and the Greek (and, in a secondary degree, 
the Roman) discipline for his mind and intellect. ^ ^ ^ ^ The 
materials of what we call classical training were prepared — and 
we have a right to say were advisedly and providentially pre- 
pared — in order that it might become, not a mere adjunct, but 
(in mathematical phrase) the complement of Christianity in its 
application to the culture of the human being, as a being formed 
both for this world and the world to come." And Luther, the 
great reformer of church and school, in urging the study of 



'» 9 



the ancient languages, exclaims, with his accustomed earnest- 
ness, "As we hold the Gospel dear, so also let us hold the lan- 
guage fast ; for if we do not keep up the tongues, we shall not 
keep up the Gospel." 

I have devoted so much space to the English Language 
and the Ancient Classics, because there is a tendency to neglect 
the study of the one, and to depreciate the value of the other. 
There is no necessity to do more than to refer briefly to the 
other studies of the college course. 

Among modern languages^ two, besides our own, hold a 
deserved preeminence : French, with its polite, conversational 
idiom, its transparent clearness, the hospitable host of many 
foreign words in their transition into the English vocabulary ; 
and German, with its strong, grand, and ponderous structure, 
and its literature, the equal of any other, in ancient or modern 
times. Though both of these languages are of high discipHnary 
value, it deserves to be remarked that German is superior to 
French for purposes of discipline and comparative philology ; and 
it may be added, as another argument in favor of the study of 
German, that it enables the student to consult the originals, from 
which many of our text-books have been compiled or translated. 
An acquaintance with French and German opens to us fields of 
living literature of great wealth and beauty, and contributes to 
a better understanding of our vernacular, which is largely 
indebted to these sources. The practical use to be made of these 
languages in foreign travel and in many parts of our own coun- 
try, is another consideration in their favor. The curriculum at 
Roanoke admits both German and French, and requires gradu- 
ation in one for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. 

Before passing from the topic of languages, I wish to com- 
mend to your consideration the following sentiment from 
Milton: "And though a linguist should pride himself to have 
all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have 
not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and 
I lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 

man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his 
mother-dialect only." 



33 



Mental^ Morale and Social Sciences, 

It requires no labored argument to vindicate the promi- 
nence given at Roanoke College to the Me?ztal and Moral Set- 
ejtces and their kindred branches. Man, the grandest object in 
the world, gives value to all else in it. As mind gives him this 
preeminence, the study of mind must be the grandest of human 
studies. "If there is anything," says Mill, ''that deserves to 
be studied by man, it is his own nature and that of his fellow- 
men ; and if it is worth studying at all, it is worth studying 
scientifically, so as to reach the fundamental laws which 
underlie and govern all the rest." In this study, the mind itself 
— that which thinks — becomes the object of thought. The 
student's own nature is brought under the scrutiny of his in- 
tellect. Its processes are studied, the laws governing it are 
investigated, analyzed, determined, and classified. Such studies 
give an acuteness to thought and a breadth of vision to be 
derived from no others, and hence they have been the delight 
of the loftiest intellects of the ages. The motive and moral 
powers are particularly treated in Moral Philosophy, or Ethics. 
The affections, the conscience, and the will, influence our mo- 
tives and actions, and hence determine our character. Whately 
is right, then, in speaking of a knowledge of our duties as " the 
most useful part of philosophy." The mental and moral sci- 
ences should be made especially prominent in this materialistic 
age, when all higher scientific thought invades the domain of 
ethics and theology ; when, in the language of a vigorous 
American writer, ''a proud and splendid science too often 
banishes conscience, or at best makes of it a mere subject and 
deputy, courteously providing it with permanent retirement as 
resident envoy in the land of religious dreams." 

Closely allied to these studies, are those which regard man 
in his social relations as a member of society and a citizen of the 
State ; such as Political Economy ^ the Constitution and History 
of his own country y International Law, and general history, so 
far as it is a branch of science — a record of the real progress of 



34 

nations, and not a mere narrative of those events which do most 
to retard that progress. As the population of our country be- 
comes more dense, questions of political and social science will 
become more complex and practical, and hence these subjects will 
demand a larger share of attention in our colleges. What 
Milton wrote for a past century in urging the study of the 
science of government, may be applied to our own times : " To 
know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies, that 
they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, be such 
poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience as 
many of our great councilors have lately shown themselves, but 
steadfast pillars of the State." 

Mathematics and Natural Sciences. 

No one is bold enough to question the value of Mathemat- 
ics. If the motto said to have been inscribed over the academy 
in which Plato taught — ''Let no one enter here who is with- 
out Geometry " — is not written over the entrance to our 
colleges, it may be said to guard the portals of graduation. 
Mathematics give us the only illustration of pure reasoning, of 
rigid demonstration. This science begins with axioms, and thus 
brings the mind to the conviction that there is such a thing as 
self-evident truth. The necessity of following the various steps 
in mathematical demonstrations, requires concentration of 
thought, and fixes the habit of attention. By long processes of 
pure reasoning, and adding link to link in demonstrations, it 
accustoms the student to consecutiveness in thinking, and pre- 
cision in expressing thought. It gives the discipline required 
to strengthen the mind for hard intellectual effort. The prac- 
tical application of mathematical principles in the higher depart- 
ments of study, and their general utility in all the business 
affairs of life, are unanswerable arguments in favor of making 
the study of this science obligatory upon all students. 

The claims of the Natural Sciences deserve hearty recog- 
nition. As disciplinary studies, they train the faculties of 
observation, comparison, and judgment. They stimulate inves- 



tigation, lead to discovery and invention, and multiply facts for 
purposes of generalization and classification in science. Through 
the study of these sciences we come better to understand the 
world around, beneath, and above us ; the operation of the 
forces of nature; the harmony of the laws of the material uni- 
verse ; and the beauties of our earthly home. But the value of 
the physical sciences consist, in no small degree, in their appli- 
cation to the various industries of life, and their contributions 
to the prosperity of the- world. This was well set forth by 
Professor Raymond, in his address at the dedication of Pardee 
Hall, at Lafayette College : — 

''The practical art of each [occupation] is not only to achieve 
certain results, but to do so profitably, to make money in doing 
so ; that is to say, to increase the value of the raw materials, 
whether wood, or cotton, or ores, or time, or ideas, by the use 
we make of them, and the transformation to which we submit 
them, so as thereby to really elevate the condition of humanity 
— to leave the world better than we found it. This is, in its 
last analysis, the meaning of honestly making money. To 
make money honestly, is to do something for other men better 
or cheaper than they can do it for themselves ; to save time and 
labor for them — in a word, to elevate their condition. It is in 
this sense, greatly as we Americans are supposed to be devoted 
to making money, that we need to learn how to make more 
money ; how to make our labor more fruitful ; how to assail 
more successfully with our few hands the natural obstacles and 
the natural resources of a mighty continent ; how to build up 
on the area of that continent a prosperous nation united in 
varied, fruitful, and harmonious industries, glowing with patriot- 
ism and inspired by religion." 

Nor need we fear that any science, thoroughly studied, will 
antagonize religion. All branches of knowledge are but so 
many avenues of approach to the Source of all truth ; and Sir 
Isaac Newton, the devout philosopher of a past century, has 
his counterpart in our own, in that great naturalist who, before 
opening his school of science on Penikese Island, invited his 
pupils and friends to join him in prayer. 



I 



36 



Studying and Teaching. 

Whatever may be said of the value of any study for pur- 
poses of mental training, it should be borne in mind that more 
depends on how it is studied and how it is taught, than upon 
the study itself Intellectual vigor comes, like physical strength, 
by proper nutrition and judicious exercise. Hence, the Ger- 
mans very appropriately apply the term gymnasium to their 
colleges. As each one must take exercise to develop his own 
body, so must each exercise his own mind to strengthen it. A 
pedestrian would be badly trained for a match, if he should do 
no more than ride or drive daily over the course, or be car- 
ried over it on the shoulders of another. Successful training 
requires that he should himself walk vigorously over the course, 
time and again. It is just so with the student. The curriculum 
— his training course (for that is the idea of the word) — will 
do little to discipline his mind to vigorous, healthy thinking, if 
he only rides over the course, or is carried over it by the mental 
support of a class-mate. The student, therefore, who attempts, 
by translations, or in any other way, to avoid the hard labor 
required to master the languages or other studies, defeats the 
primary object aimed at in the curriculum — discipline of mind. 
And he needs the hard labor, the constant application, the vig- 
orous exercise, no less than the pedestrian. There is much 
truth in the satirical exclamation of Emerson, " How many men 
would fain go to bed dunces to be waked up Solomons ! " But 
that is not God's way of making Solomons. 

Enforced exercise will do less to strengthen the body 
than that which is accompanied with pleasurable emotions. 
The same principle holds with regard to mental exercise. The 
student should learn to take delight in his intellectual gym- 
nastics, so that in the pursuit of knowledge he may be urged on 
by happiness, which Spencer justly calls "the most powerful of 
tonics." And if Jean Paul is correct, — *' It is not the goal, but 
the course, that makes us happy," — what endless vistas of happi- 
ness open before the student who has learned, as all may, to 



11 

love the exertion of searching after truth ! The Greek proverb, 
" If you love learning, you will have learning," means simply 
this, that a man will labor to get what he loves. " A desire for 
knowledge," says Dr. Samuel Johnson, '*is the natural feeling 
of mankind ; and every human being whose mind is not de- 
bauched will be willing to give all that he has to get knowl- 
edge." The mind, as well as the body, is the creature of habit. 
The normal state of a healthy body is activity ; but indolence 
may grow into a powerful habit, and change the order of nature. 
If men may overcome a natural repugnance to whiskey and 
tobacco and learn to love filthy bodily habits, surely every 
student who "keeps faithful with a singleness of aim" in the 
pursuit of learning, will form the habit of acquiring knowledge, 
and find pleasure in it. Every young man would do well, there- 
fore, to profit by the Spanish proverb, " Choose that which is 
most useful, and habit will soon render it the most agreeable T 
It was Horace Mann who made the complaint that ''un- 
fortunately education amongst us at present consists too much 
in telling, and not in traini?ig ; " and Hood, who complained of 
being ''overtasked and U7idertaught'' Into the first of these 
errors, a teacher is apt to fall, from the love of communicating 
truth: into the second, there is danger of our institutions fall- 
ing, because of the importance of the many studies claiming a 
place in the curriculum. Whatever is taught, should be taught 
thoroughly; for only those studies which are mastered, are 
really profitable. The intellect may be so surfeited by cram- 
ming as not to admit of digestion and assimilation ; the conse- 
quence of which is rather to weaken than to strengthen it. 
Bacon says the student must "chew and digest.'' A principle 
underlying all successful teaching is, to do nothing for the stu- 
dent which he can do for himself He should be encouraged, 
stimulated, and even aided when necessary, but he should never 
be thoughtlessly robbed of the sweetness of success. Every 
task mastered adds to the student's pleasure and cultivates the 
virtue of self-reliance. Each hard problem solved is that much 
strength gained for the next theorem in mathematics, the next 
syllogism in logic, or difficult construction in Latin. What a 



38 

valuable preparation for solving the problems of real life is a 
mind thus trained to patient, self-reliant labor! Unless the 
student is awakened, little or nothing will be accomplished. 
** Self-activity," says Sir William Hamilton, ''is the indispensa- 
ble condition of improvement ; and education is only education 
— that is, accomplishes its purposes only by affording objects 
and supplying incitements to this spontaneous exertion." This 
end is best attained by earnest, enthusiastic teaching. These 
qualities will soon spread a contagious inspiration through the 
class. In this way teaching becomes stimulating and suggest- 
ive, and students grow eager to advance. There is a beautiful 
lesson in the form of salutation formerly used by professors who 
lectured in Latin, in addressing their pupils as *' Commilitones " 
— '"fellow-soldiers." The teacher leads the way ; the students 
help to fight the battle. 

Unit^s^iAHl Haste in Education. 

What has been aptly styled the ^'unlovely haste^^ of our 
age, presents the most serious obstacle to that thorough scholar- 
ship and liberal training at which our colleges aim. Parents 
and sons desire dispatch in going over the course. Boys hurry, 
half-prepared, from the academy to the college, and then, if 
permitted, hurry over the course to take a diploma. And too 
often the chief aim is to find a college in which graduation may 
be attained in the shortest possible time. All of which goes to 
prove that many prefer the empty name of graduation to the 
possession of thorough training. It is the fault of the age, 
more than of the colleges, that men over-estimate the im- 
mediate and sordid, and discount the solid and permanent. 
We find little in our day of the patient spirit of Milton, who, 
although distinguished for scholarship at the University of 
Cambridge, where he wrote Latin verses with classic elegance 
(so says Dr. Samuel Johnson), gave himself up to five years of 
private study before embarking in life, assigning as a reason 
that he ''cared not how late he came into life, only that he 
came fit." Demosthenes won his first triumph when twenty- 



39 

seven ; and Cicero, although he had tasted at that age the fru- 
ition of his coming fame, afterward studied abroad for two years 
under the best masters in various countries. In his Treatise 
de Claris Oratoribus^ Cicero, after giving an account of his pro- 
tracted studies and his subsequent success, says : '' My object 
in all that I have said is not to make a boast of any genius and 
eloquence, which I am far from pretending to, but to show you 
what my labor and industry have been." No wonder, then, 
that Mr. Hallam is constrained to speak of the "consummate 
grace and richness which enchant every successive generation 
in the periods of Cicero." But all this was accomplished by 
what we call drudgery, and what Tacitus styled ''' infinittis 
labor^'^ a quality which this practical age, with an air of as- 
sumed superiority, has virtually relegated to the shades of 
antiquated notions. For we travel by steam, and talk and write 
by electricity, and hence must be at least ten millenniums 
ahead of the ancients in everything ! 

They take more time for education, and hence are more 
thorough, in England and Germany, than we are in America. 
But what costs six or eight years of hard study in well-equipped 
fitting schools in Europe, is often attempted in two or three 
years in American academies and high schools. Irregular and 
imperfect preparation for college, and the desire to hurry 
through the curriculum, offer serious obstacles, at least in the 
Southern States, to the elevation of the standard of collegiate 
education. President Porter, of Yale, in his valuable work, 
"American Colleges and the American Public," after discussing 
this phase of educational work, reaches what appears to be a 
wise conclusion. " Whatever theory of preparation be set up," 
says he, " the fact remains unchanged, that in such a country as 
ours, a portion of the first year in college must, for the present, 
within certain limits, be regarded as a fairer and more whole- 
some test of a student's capacity to go on with success, than 
the minutest and most rigid entrance examination." If this be 
true from President Porter's standpoint, it applies with even 
greater force to college work in the Southern States. For here 
our preparatory schools, on the one hand, often do too little ; 



40 

and, on the other, as often attempt, without the necessary 
equipments, to do college work. In Virginia and other 
Southern States we have the anomalies of universities doing 
college work, without a college organization ; and colleges, 
organized on the university plan, attempting to do the 
work which legitimately belongs to the university. We 
cannot, then, say that we have a system of education; and 
those institutions which adhere to the historic idea of the 
college, as illustrated in the German gymnasium, supple- 
menting, on the one hand, the preparatory school, and sup- 
plemented, on the other, by the university proper, may adopt 
to-day what was said by Jared Sparks, LL.D., President of 
Harvard, forty years ago: "We are compelled to struggle 
along as we can through these difficulties, satisfied that our 
task is imperfectly executed, and consoling ourselves with the 
conviction that we can do no more till some mode shall be dis- 
covered of retarding the stream of time or quickening the 
powers of intellect." 

But if we deprecate the haste with which young men wish 
to complete the prescribed college curriculum, what shall we 
say of those who hurry into the '* /^^r«^^ professions" (a partial 
misnomer in our day) with no general culture or liberal train- 
ing, often with not so much as a preparatory school ought to 
furnish t The tendency of this unwise haste is not only to 
depreciate thorough collegiate education, but to underrate that 
higher success in practice and elevating influence in life at 
which every professional practitioner should aim. Too many 
in all the walks of life care nothing for general scholarship, 
sound learning, or personal culture. The truth is, that men 
think too little of themselves as men, and too much of them- 
selves as machines to make money. The aspirations of many 
never rise above plans for making a living; and hence they do 
not wish to "lose" time in learning what they may never 
need. This is ultra-utilitarianism. 



41 



II. MORAL EDUCATION, OR TRAINING OF CHARACTER. 

A man's mind may be developed and strengthened by pro- 
cesses of severe discipline ; his observation may be acute ; his 
reasoning profound ; his memory retentive ; his imagination 
rich and fervid ; and yet these glorious powers may be prosti- 
tuted to ignoble uses. History and biography unite, as with a 
thousand voices, to teach the melancholy lesson that no amount 
of mere intellectual culture, and no resources of learning how- 
ever great, without moral elevation, can save nations and 
individuals from vice and ruin. The great poet of human 
nature tells us that ''talents angel bright" may become 

** Shining instruments to finish faults, 

And give infamy renown." 

And SO Sir Thomas More writes: "For as I esteem learning 
which is joined with virtue, more than all the treasures of kings ; 
so what doth the fame of being a great scholar bring us, if it be 
severed from virtue, other than a notorious and famous infamy } " 

As education increases a niajis power, it is of prime impor- 
tance that this power be used aright. And that education 
which increases the power to do, and does not concern itself 
with efforts to direct this power for good, is not the education 
that is to prepare for the highest conception of useful living. 

With the first dawnings of intellectual light, the mind rec- 
ognizes the ideas of right and wrong, and the obligation to 
choose the right. This is the moral faculty, or sense of duty, 
which gives the rule of life to man as a moral being. Upon 
this basis must all right character be built up. " The conscious- 
ness of duty," says James Anthony Froude, "whatever its 
origin, is to the moral nature of man what life is in the seed- 
cells of all organized creatures — the condition of its coherence, 
the elementary force in virtue of which it grows." As the 
sense of duty is recognized in early years, moral training begins 
in the family. In order to point out a serious obstacle to sue- 



42 

cessful moral training in our higher institutions, it will be in place 
to notice a glaring fault in modern society. There is too much of 
the Epicurean philosophy in the lessons of childhood, and too 
little exercise of the authority ordained by God for the well- 
ordering of the family. As appetite is always stronger than 
reason in. early life, children should be taught at first to obey 
implicitly from a sense of obligation to parental authority ; and 
gradually, as the moral faculty expands, from the higher sense of 
duty. Authority itself has no rights except those which rest on 
moral obligation; and hence the parent's sense of duty should 
be the sole and unquestioned guide for the child, until, with ad- 
vancing years, he shall recognize in that authority a beneficent 
power conducive to his own happiness. This dutiful obedience, 
the crown-jewel among filial virtues, is a necessary element in 
moral training through life. And as obedience to moral obli- 
gation leads to the discharge of duty, which alone insures 
happiness, obedience may be called the great lesson of life. 

" Duty by habit is to pleasure turned ; 
He is content who to obey has learned." 

Neglect of Early Training, 

But let us see how this duty of early training is discharged 
in our domestic economy. A moral and immortal being is to 
be educated. As yet it is guided by the impulses of appetite, 
and has not learned the restraints of reason. How is it often 
trained.? Every childish whim is either gratified without being 
questioned, or else obedience is purchased by rewards that 
stimulate the appetite. To be paid to do one's duty is akin to 
bribery ; and yet this is the rule applied in the training of many 
households. What is the result? By the unalterable laws of its 
own being, the child grows into the habit of acting from the hope 
of material reward or sensual gratification. "The character is 
borne onward by one impulse, acquiring intensity by daily grat- 
ification, until it settles into that most debasing form of selfish- 
ness in which the appetite is made a god ; all affections, chari- 
ties, human feelings, are sacrificed at its shrine, and whatever 



43 

power of intellect or graces of imagination linger, serve only to 
decorate its altar" [Lalor). The sense of obligation gradually 
weakens and decays ; duty becomes a meaningless term ; the 
very foundation upon which true character must rest is under- 
mined, and the cultivation of the moral faculties is rendered 
almost impossible. With the decaying sense of duty, the obli- 
gation to parental authority is obscured, and finally disappears ; 
and the child — more to be pitied than blamed — becomes the 
victim of false domestic training — of a sickly, sentimental fond- 
ness, which has nothing in common with true affection. The 
boy who thus grows up a slave to appetitive cravings, and runs 
a wild career of dissipation and degradation, has often to bear 
the censure which legitimately belongs to the parent. Among 
the Spartans, boys were boys until they attained the age of 
eighteen, and then youths until thirty. But in our progressive 
age, boyhood frequently ends where it should begin ; and youth, 
immortalized in fable and song as the joyous springtime of life, 
is so shortened as to be hardly perceptible. Young America 
lies down a boy, passes his youth in a night, and wakes up to 
think himself a man. How often are questions of grave moral 
import referred to parents by teachers, only to be referred in 
turn to boys, — immature in all else but self-will, — to ''see what 
they will say about it ; " which generally means that the boy will 
have his own way, because he is master of the family. The 
importance of the subject under consideration may be further 
impressed by Luther, who says: ''Family government is the 
first thing ; from which all other governments and authorities 
take their origin. If this root is not good, neither can the stem 
be good, nor can good fruit follow. Kingdoms are composed of 
single families. Where father and mother govern ill and let the 
children have their own way, there can neither city, market, 
village, country, principality, kingdom, nor empire, be well and 
peaceably governed. For out of sons are made fathers of fami- 
lies, judges, burgomasters, princes, kings, emperors, preachers, 
schoolmasters, etc. ; and where these are ill trained, there the 
subjects become as their lord, the members as their head." 

When a student enters college, the Faculty, acting m loco 



44 

parentis, become his guide in the path of duty. But suppose 
he has never been taught to walk in that path ? Suppose that 
appeals to his sense of duty fall upon a conscience that is not 
controlled by moral obligation ? Suppose that he has not 
learned the lesson of obedience at home ? In all such cases 
the task imposed upon the college is rendered all the more 
difficult from the absence of early training. The young men 
who are most susceptible of high moral and intellectual culture, 
are those who have been taught these four things in the family : 
duty, obedience, self-denial, and i^tdustry ; which are really in- 
cluded in the word duty, but I prefer to make the subdivision. 
And the boys who give their parents trouble and do little of any 
worth at college, are those who have not learned the four things 
specified ; or, in other words, those who have grown up in 
neglect of duty^ in disobedience, self-indulgence , and idleness. 
Out of such material it is nearly impossible to make either 
scholars or gentlemen. When parents have done their duty, 
college authorities have little or no trouble. And yet many 
persons, who would not expect a mechanic to do good work 
without good materials, expect colleges to make good boys out 
of spoiled boys, and good students out of boys who were good 
for nothing at home, and who were sent or drive^i to college 
against their will. It is unreasonable to expect our higher insti- 
tutions to accomplish the best results with youths who have 
been permitted to grow up with little or no moral training. 

To this neglect of early training, we may trace much of 
that spirit of insubordination, that want of respect for law and 
order, the little reverence paid to age and experience, for 
which our times are only too sadly conspicuous. To this, too, 
may we refer the hazing and riots and insubordination, which 
have done so much to prejudice the public mind against college 
discipline, and to give our higher institutions an unenviable, and 
often undeserved, reputation for bad manners and worse morals. 
It is a matter for congratulation that the student-sentiment in 
our Virginia colleges and universities, and certainly at Roa- 
noke, would not permit the disgraceful exhibitions and coarse 
indignities and cruelties practiced at some American institutions. 



45 



Character Above All. 

Moral character is a personal possession ; it is the man him- 
self. And a man is what his heart is — his faith, his hopes, his 
purposes ; these are the man himself. The great question to ask 
about a man is not, Who is he ? or, What has he ? or even. What 
does he know? but, What is hef not professionally, or in busi- 
ness, but. What is he as a manf What is his moral worth? The 
answer to this question will give his character. "A college 
course," says Ex-President Woolsey, of Yale, ''should have in 
view three things : character, culture, knowledge ; of which, 
character is the best worth having." Character and reputation 
are not synonymous terms. A man's reputation is measured by 
what others think of him, and it may, or may not be, based on 
his real character. Reputation is fickle, because it rests on 
popular opinion ; character is everlasting, because it inheres in 
the soul. A man's character is not affected by what others may 
say or think of him, but only by the thoughts, motives, and 
actions of each one for himself. In this respect character and 
reputation differ widely. The tongue of slander may injure a 
man's reputation ; he may be applauded by the populace to-day, 
and hissed to-morrow ; but all the while his character may be 
developing into a higher manhood, for this is in his own keep- 
ing, and he alone can enhance or injure it. Reputation is often 
enhanced by yielding to popular opinion ; character is strength- 
ened by exercising the noblest courage — the courage to do right. 
Moral character is the basis of true physical courage, or bravery ; 
but its own basis is moral courage. A man may have the phys- 
ical courage to risk his life because public opinion, as he sup- 
poses, forces him to do so; but he who braves public opinion, 
and who will not allow it to dictate to him against his own con- 
victions of right, is the moral hero, the highest type of manly 
character. It is a base surrender to circumstances to commit 
suicide, though it may take a degree of physical courage. It is 
a brave thing to meet a foe in deadly combat, or to stand in the 



46 

front rank when the battle is fiercest ; but there is a braver 
thing than any of these; it is this: to live right — to live 

" A life that dares send 
A challenge to its end, 
And when it comes, says, 
♦ Welcome, friend !' " 

We need to teach men to think justly and independently ; 
to dare to think for themselves ; to dare to break over the 
restraints of fashion, of depraved public sentiment, of the servile 
fear of ridicule ; to exercise that moral courage which ** will 
make them hate the cowardice of doing wrong." For of all the 
forms of dwarfed humanity, he is most to be pitied who has a 
dzvarfed character — a little soul. And he who, out in the world, 
receives the plaudits and honors of men, and yet comes home 
to cower at the bar of his own conscience as it passes judgment 
upon his actions — what is he, after all, but a miserable craven ? 

^\vQ training of character is to be secured in our colleges 
partly by instruction in the text-books, especially in those of 
moral science ; but no opportunity of impressing ethical lessons 
from any of the studies of the course should be neglected. The 
best studies after moral science for this purpose are the social 
sciences ; history, with its stirring records ; and the ancient 
languages and literature. ''The classic writers," to quote again 
from Mr. Mill, '' exhibit precisely that order of virtues in which 
we are apt to be deficient. They altogether show human nature 
on a grander scale, with less benevolence but more patriotism, 
— less sentiment but more self-control; if a lower average of 
virtue, more striking individual examples, of it ; fewer small 
goodnesses, but more greatness and appreciation of greatness ; 
more which tends to exalt the imagination and inspire high 
conceptions of the capabilities of human nature." The exam- 
ples of the truly good and great, of those whose lives have 
illustrated heroic self-denial and pure devotion to the welfare 
of mankind, should be held up to the admiration of youth. 
Moral grandeur and active benevolence should be commended 
as worthy of their cultivation and practice. But as living exam- 



47 

pies teach more than precept, students will receive their moral 
impressions largely from their teachers and companions. By 
lives of unselfish devotion to duty, of untiring effort for the 
happiness of others, and by the exhibition of high moral 
qualities, teachers may win the esteem and confidence, and thus 
exert an influence in molding the characters, of their pupils. 
Something may be done also in moral training by general 
lectures to the body of students on the duties of life and the 
virtues that go to make up true manhood. *' What," asks Ed- 
mund Burke, *'is the education of the generality of mankind.? 
Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples of virtue and justice, 
form the education of the world." 

Value of Discipline, 

But the most efficient means of moral training, in the sphere 
of the college, is its discipline. Founded on duty to the pupil 
and the institution, it should be wise and just, and hence 
always impartial. It should be administered with the firmness 
inspired by the recognition of high moral responsibilities, and, 
at the same time, with the most affectionate kindness and con- 
sideration. The student should feel that the authorities of the 
college are always guided by a sincere desire to promote his 
highest good. By appeals to his sense of duty, he should be 
encouraged to practice self-government, which is a most dif- 
ficult and yet useful lesson to learn. As the ultimate aim of 
education is to form a reasonable man, so the end of all disci- 
pline is to teach the student to govern himself. We may not 
overlook in this connection the disciplinary value of the syste- 
matic routine of college hfe and the regular discharge of pre- 
scribed duties, in forming the moral character and business 
habits of young men. And hence no conscientious teacher can 
do otherwise than attach a high importance to all that concerns 
the formative period of student life. 

Before passing from this topic of the moral effect of disci- 
pline, I wish to remark that the rigid discipline and implicit 
obedience to authority enforced at West Point and AnnapoUs 



48 

are generally regarded as excellent methods of developing that 
high sense of honor and manly character for which the officers 
of our army and navy are esteemed. But public sentiment, 
which is so nearly unanimous on this point, is strangely incon- 
sistent with itself on the question of discipline in our higher 
literary institutions, many urging that the best way to control 
young men is to throw them on their sense of honor. This is 
certainly a beautiful theory, but it can be applied only where the 
students have all learned the lesson of self-government. It 
might be difficult to find such a school. I am not in favor of 
military discipline in our colleges — far from it; but this in- 
quiry, at least, seems pertinent : If the rigid system so strictly 
enforced in the government training schools develops manly 
character in those who are to be the heroes of war, why may 
not a similar result be attained in training the heroes of civil 
life, by requiring an equally prompt compliance with mild regu- 
lations, and an equally ready obedience to mild authority in our 
literary institutions.? 

Tritthfulness in thought, word and deed, is a first principle 
in morals, and hence its cultivation should be strenuously urged. 
The college must teach the duty of sincerity in purpose, and 
honesty in practice. The institution must itself be exactly what 
it professes to be. It must encourage no shams, and allow no 
counterfeits. What Milton says of a nation, that it " ought to 
be as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or 
stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in 
body," — this we should be able to say of our colleges. They 
should be the embodiment of truthfulness and honesty. Every 
act of deception, every effort to appear what we are not, is 
opposed to the spirit of truthfulness, and hence is immoral. The 
whole tone of an institution should discountenance that large 
class in modern society, the moral hypocrites, who always ''strive 
to seem, but never care to be^ The esprit de corps of the stu- 
dents of a college ought to be such as to banish all forms of 
deception in recitations and dishonest practices in examinations. 
No student should wish to receive, and certainly no college 
should confer, a diploma, except upon the basis of diligent 
application, thorough attainments, and honorable deportment. 



49 



National Safety. 

The only guarantee which a nation has of permanence or 
the world of enduring progress, is in the moral worth of indi- 
viduals. Every man is more than his trade or profession. He 
is a moral being, a member of society, a citizen of the State. 
As such, he has a character, good or bad, and exerts a degree 
of influence. It is man's glory that he has the power of influ- 
encing others. It is the business of education to see that the 
dominant influence of society is on the side of truth and justice,, 
morality and religion. Whether this shall be accomplished 
depends upon the character of the nation, which is nothing more 
than the aggregate character of its individual citizens. Hence, 
every citizen should keep in mind that he has, to use the words 
of another, ''a seat in the parliament of public opinion." 
There is a weighty lesson to be learned from an incident which 
followed the battle of Sedan. Among Napoleon's papers was 
found, unopened, a report on the " Prussian Army and People," 
by his staff" officer, Stofl'el. This sagacious officer based his 
fear for France on the *' inferior moral condition of her people, 
and particularly on the levity of all classes, and the evident 
decay of the public sense of duty." That his fears were well 
grounded, the result of the Franco-Prussian war abundantly 
testifies. The statistics of that brief conflict show that two per 
cent of the German, and twenty-seven per cent of the French 
soldiers, were illiterates. If we take into account the fact that 
education in Germany includes moral and religious training, we 
have a striking illustration of the value of moral education to a 
nation. 

Religion in Education^ 

Closely connected with man's moral, is his religious nature. 
The source of obligation is God. All true character, therefore, 
is based on duty to Him. That this religious element in man's 
nature deserves recognition in education, may be argued from 
the fact that religion is the foundation of society and the State. 



5o 



LaPlace makes this reluctant confession : " I have lived long 
enough to know — what I did not once believe — that no society 
can be upheld in happiness and honor, without the sentiment of 
religion." ** It seems to me," says Carlyle, "a. great truth that 
human things cannot stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, 
or economies and law courts ; that if there be not a religious 
sentiment in the relations of men, such relations are doomed to 
ruin." And Webster, in his famous speech in the Girard will 
case, based his argument upon the proposition that Christianity 
is the religion of our country, and hence should not be excluded 
from the teachings in our schools. 

But there is higher ground. Christianity is a great living, 
personal power — the sun around which the moral virtues 
revolve. In the beautiful words of Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, 
religion is **a citizen of heaven come down to spread peace 
among men." It is an important element in conserving the 
welfare of society, because it enters as a personal force, a con- 
trolling principle, into the life of individuals. It brings the 
affections into harmony with the will of heaven, fosters the 
spirit of universal benevolence, and animates man, amidst the 
activities of this life, with ennobling aspirations for the life to 
come. The holy precepts of the Christian religion do more 
than all else to purify and vitalize the fountains of thought, to 
sanctify the uses of learning, to inspire true greatness of char- 
acter, and to prepare man for the highest realization of useful 
living. 

*' Religion is the true philosophy ! 
Faith' is the last great link 'twixt 
God and man." 

I have thus endeavored to present the constituent elements 
of education as a preparation for useful living. However 
unsatisfactory the presentation, it has been made with the 
earnestness inspired by strong convictions of the vast impor- 
tance of this theme, not only to us, but to all coming genera- 
tions. These convictions have been intensified as I have 
thought of the high duties and responsibilities, for the discharge 



5i 

of which this education is to be a preparation ; and the still 
higher consideration that this life is but a training school for a 
state of existence whose course is eternity. 

III. USEFUL LIVING. 

It was my original purpose to treat somewhat fully of what 
I understand by useful living ; but the already protracted 
length of this address, and the patience of my audience thus 
far, admonish me that I may not unduly add to the one, or 
impose with impunity longer upon the other. With your kind 
permission, I proceed to give an outline which time will not 
permit me now to elaborate. 

Not what a man has in property, or knows from books or 
experience, or is in character and influence ; but what he does 
with his money and knowledge and influence, is the measure of 
his usefulness as a scholar, as a citizen, and as a Christian. It 
is every man's duty to do something in the world ; and as wealth, 
knowledge, and influence, increase his power, so they increase 
his obligation to do more for his country, his fellow-men, and 
his God. Wealth is not to be despised, for it is God's gift, and 
is necessary to the progress of civilization. But wealth cannot 
even secure respect, except upon two conditions : that it be 
honestly obtained, and generously used for the benefit of others. 
Knowledge is a priceless boon, and personal culture is worth the 
patient effort of a life-time ; but learning must be sought for a 
higher end than simply to cultivate and enrich the mind, to 
augment the fame, or increase the bank-account of its pos- 
sessor. "The real use of all knowledge," as Lord Bacon 
observes, "is this: that we should dedicate that reason which 
was given us by God, to the use and advantage of man." " When 
I name knowledge," says Lord Chatham, "I ever intend learn- 
ing as the weapon and instrument only of manly, honorable, and 
virtuous action upon the stage of the world, both in private and 
public life ; as a gentleman and a member of the commonwealth, 
who is to answer for all he does to the laws of his country, to 
his own breast and conscience, and at the tribunal of honor and 



/ 



52 



good fame." Character is our only enduring possession, for that 
we take with us from this world ; but so long as our citizenship 
is among men, it is our high duty to throw the influence of our 
character in favor of honesty, industry, truth, benevolence, edu- 
cation, and religion. By availing ourselves of every legitimate 
means of extending our influence for worthy ends, by using 
our property for the happiness of others, and by following the 
apostolic injunction to do good as Tjue have opportunity (and the 
supply of opportunity always exceeds the demand), we may 
become examples of useful living, realize what Goldsmith calls 
" the luxury of doing good," and leave behind us '* the memory 
of a well-spent life, which is everlasting" {Cicero). 

"Great is he 
Who uses his greatness for all." 

Learn Much to do Much. 

One idle man is one too many for any town, for any coun- 
try, for the world ; for God never made any man to do nothing. 
He dignified labor in the beginning, and we do not read that 
he put servants in Eden, that our first parents might be idle. 
This, then, is God's lesson to man : that in work are honor and 
happiness ; in idleness, disgrace and discontent. It is the 
business of a college, therefore, to teach the duty, dignity, use- 
fulness, and happiness of labor. Seneca said that he "would 
rather be sick than idle" ; and Spinoza, one of the most powerful 
intellectual workers of any age, refused to accept pensions and 
legacies, and preferred to maintain himself by grinding object- 
glasses for microscopes and telescopes. ''The sum of wisdom," 
says Emerson, "is, that the time is never lost that is devoted to 
work." It should be the aim of all schools to educate men up to, 
but Yi^v^x abovcy work ; for what John Smith wrote of the wilder- 
ness of Virginia in his day, is still- true of our whole country: 
" Nothing is to be expected thence, but by labor." There is a 
radical defect in any theory of education which depreciates that 
by which this great country has been developed ; which makes 
colleges themselves possible, and carries on the splendid Chris- 
tian, commercial, and industrial enterprises of this stirring age. 



^3 

Let no man, then, dare to depreciate any honest effort, 
whether of the head or the hands. Let no one speak of the 
"respectability" of this profession or that business. Let soci- 
ety frown on genteel idleness, as well as on ignorant laziness. 
Let all true patriots teach by precept and example that all 
honest labor — whether in the pulpit or in the school-room, in 
the study or in the shop, on the farm or in the mine, in the 
factory or behind the counter — is useful, respectable, and hon- 
orable. And let our colleges, in all their teachings, impress 
this motto : Learn much to do much. 



The Institution Itself. 

A college should endeavor to widen its sphere of influence 
and usefulness. To do this successfully, it must have a^perma- 
nent endowment fund. So strong is the conviction on this 
point among those who have studied college history, that an 
endowment fund is now generally considered necessary to the 
highest efficiency and perpetuity of literary institutions. In no 
country have more princely gifts been made to learning than in 
our own, thirty-three million dollars having been given by 
private donors to the higher education in the United States in 
the first four years of the present decade. In a recent public 
address, Dean Stanley eulogized America " for the extraordi- 
nary munificence shown in the multiplication of institutions 
emanating in a large degree from the piety and liberality of indi- 
vidual founders and benefactors." This generosity is not con- 
fined within the broad domain between the eastern and western 
shores of our own country, but it has crossed the Atlantic ; and 
the New World is now paying back the debt due to the civili- 
zation of the Old, by founding colleges in the ancient centers of 
literature and Christianity. But while it is true that money has 
been given even lavishly to found and endow colleges in this 
country, it is also true that nearly all the large educational 
endowments are in the Northern States, and that most of the 
colleges in the South are sadly in want of the means to accom- 



54 

plish satisfactorily the great work laid upon them. It is not 
proper at this time to inquire into the causes of this disparity 
of literary endowments in the Southern States. There is good 
reason to hope, however, that the development of our material 
resources and the prosecution of diversified industries, will, in 
time, bring to the people of these States accumulated wealth 
for benevolent uses. But if the true spirit of benevolence exists, 
it will manifest itself in small gifts even when it cannot make 
large benefactions. 

That we may offer at Roanoke such advantages as the 
present age demands, and offer these on such terms as may 
enable young men of slender means to enjoy these advantages, 
the College asks for the generous aid of friends in Virginia and 
throughout the country. Through the voluntary contributions 
of many friends, we have been enabled to-day to dedicate to the 
uses of learning a new library building. While our hearts are 
grateful for this, we cannot forget that the College needs other 
buildings: one for scientific purposes; another, for a public 
hall ; and a third, for a gymnasium. Even in an age run mad. 
over athletic contests, we venture to advocate gymnastics as a 
prescribed part of educational training. But, most of all, we 
need a permanent endowment for the better maintenance of the 
College, the increase of its faculty and facilities of instruction, 
and the ability to bestow aid on worthy young men who are 
struggling to fit themselves for usefulness, especially as teachers 
in schools or as ministers of the Gospel. As the institution is 
conducted on principles of rigid economy, and the necessary ex- 
penses of a student are so small as to bring its advantages within 
the reach of large numbers, Roanoke invites a consideration of 
her claims by all who are interested in building up Christian 
colleges. "All things considered," says the president of the 
oldest university in America, ** there is no form of endowment 
for the benefit of mankind more permanent, more secure from 
abuse, or surer to do good, than the endowment of public teach- 
ing in a well-organized institution of learning." And it is a 
matter of fact that the gift of John Harvard, made over two 
centuries ago, is still yielding annual fruit at the proud univer- 



55 



sity which bears his name. Sir Henry Maine, in an address 
before the University of Calcutta, gives it as his "fixed opinion 
that there is no surer, no easier, no cheaper road to immortality, 
— such as can be obtained in this world, — than that which lies 
through liberality expending itself in the formation of educa- 
tional endowments." 

A college must sympathize with all efforts for the right ed- 
ucation of all classes. It cannot accept the truth of Pope's line, 

''A little learning is a dangerous thing," 

except upon the supposition that this ''little learning" is with- 
out a moral basis. All right education is a blessing ; and hence 
a college should aim to send out competent teachers, trained in 
mind and heart, for the great work of diffusing this blessing 
throughout the land. In no country in the world is general 
intelligence so necessary as in ours for the maintenance of free 
government. This was recognized as a political maxim by 
Washington, Jefferson, and the other fathers of the Republic. 
'' A popular government," says Madison, "■ without popular 
information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a 
farce or tragedy, or perhaps to both. ^^ ^ ^ Learned institutions 
ought to be favorite objects with every free people." 

There is nothing of monasticism in the American colleges 
of to-day. They feel the pulsations of the great outside world, 
and breathe the very life of the age in which they exist. 
Charles Dickens was so deeply impressed with this feature 
that after enumerating, in his '' American Notes," the excellen- 
cies of our institutions, he adds : " Above all, in their whole 
course of study and instruction, they recognize a world, and a 
broad one, too, lying beyond the college walls." As a part of 
the country, colleges should be interested in the development 
of the material, as well as of the intellectual, resources of that 
country. They cannot be indifferent to the political condition, 
the industrial enterprises, or the humane, benevolent, and re- 
ligious movements of the generations which they serve. If 
they are interested in the past, it is only to bring lessons oi ex- 



DO 



perience for the instruction of the present, that the present 
may have something of value to bequeath to the future. And 
hence our colleges should aim to train bands of scholars, who 
as statesmen, jurists, or lawyers, physicians, ministers, or 
teachers, farmers, merchants, or mechanics, will go out from the 
institutions, filled with a desire to do their part of the world's 
work — to aid in carrying forward human progress another 
stadium toward its final consummation. 



Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees : — 

At your hands, through your official representative, I have 
just received a sacred charge. For this expression of your con- 
fidence, permit me to assure you of my grateful appreciation. 
My thanks are due to you, sir, for the very kind manner in 
which you have been pleased to discharge the duty assigned 
you by the Trustees. With all my heart I join in the tribute 
you have paid to the first President of Roanoke College, who, 
three years ago, passed to his reward. I shall never fail to pay 
the homage of grateful affection to the memory of one who, as 
my instructor, was kind and faithful ; as my counselor, wise and 
prudent ; as my friend, steadfast unto death. The intimate 
communion which I enjoyed with this great, unselfish. Chris- 
tian gentleman, is esteemed among the most precious privileges 
of my life. I am not a stranger, therefore, to the exalted char- 
acter, varied attainments, and untiring devotion, illustrated in 
President Bittle, and in my immediate predecessor, whose 
presence and sympathy are still ours, though other duties claim 
his services. To follow these two you have called another, not 
to honors, but to work, — not to ease, but to assume responsibili- 
ties, to discharge duties, and to perform labors, from which any 
one might shrink. He brings to the position no conscious 
qualifications save an earnest purpose to do all in his power to 
promote the best interests of this Christian College. Painfully 
sensible of his own insufficiency, confidently expecting your 



57 

continued support and hearty cooperation, and relying, above 
all, upon the assistance and direction of the same beneficent 
Providence who has thus far so richly blessed Roanoke College, 
he accepts the high trust imposed by your authority. Solicitous 
that the College shall aim at no results that are merely superfi- 
cial, and seek no reputation that is not based on real merit, it will 
be his highest endeavor to contribute, so far as he may be able, 
to the enforcement of wholesome discipline, the preservation ot 
good morals, the increase of the facilities of instruction, and the 
maintenance of a high standard of scholarship, as the indispen- 
sable requisites to true success and permanent prosperity. 

You have not failed to observe that, in the discussions of my 
theme, I have set forth only what has ever been, and, I trust may 
ever be, the aim of Roanoke College. Founded in the true spirit 
of Christian philanthropy, — *' for the glory of God and the good 
of mankind," — and built up by prayer, faith, and self-sacrificing 
labor, the College has always endeavored to educate the whole 
man ; to do for young men, in four years, all that can be done in 
giving them a liberal education, in training them to a right char- 
acter, and in stimulating them with high hopes of useful living 
— the only true success! A review of its work for the past 
quarter of a century, furnishes the best testimony to the wisdom 
of its founders, the faithfulness of its instruction, and the effi- 
ciency of its management. The past is fruitful in lessons of 
encouragement ; the present is bright with the promises of a 
prosperous future. Prominent among the grounds for hope, 
may be mentioned, with profound gratitude, the growing interest 
in the College at home and abroad, and the generous contribu- 
tions already made by friends in many parts of the Union. It 
is a source of encouragement, too, that since the war the College 
has drawn its patronage from twenty States and Territories, and 
that its graduates are successfully filling positions of honor 
and usefulness in all parts of our country. Another ground 
for hope is to be found in the reputation which the College 
has established for high moral and Christian character. 
And as we plan for the enlargement of the institution, let us 
ever remember that the true glory of a college does not consist 



58 



so much in the extent of its buildings, the munificence of its 
endowments, or the number of its students, as in the spirit that 
pervades and controls those connected with it, and those who go 
out into the world as its representatives. With the growing 
reputation of the College for thorough training, the faithful ad- 
ministration of its internal affairs, the continued benefactions of 
the friends of education, and the abiding interest and active sup- 
port of its graduates, ex-students, and friends, we may hope that 
increasing years will bring increasing strength, and that this 
institution may have the best of all endowments — that of per- 
petual youth. 

Our acknowledgments are tendered to you, honored sir, for 
the valuable services you have to-day rendered in the ceremo 
nies of opening the Bittle Memorial Hall, and for the kind 
greetings you bring to Roanoke College from the great univer- 
sity of a great State. We congratulate you that, through your 
distinguished services and the faithful labors of your associates, 
the University of Pennsylvania, which claims Benjamin Frank- 
lin among its founders, is to-day fulfilling the devout wish ex- 
pressed by the orator at your Centennial Anniversary, thirty 
years ago, that there might '^be immortal youth always cours- 
ing in its veins, though a century's snows are upon its brow." 
Heartily reciprocating the sentiment that the Republic of Let- 
ters is world-wide, and hence,, in America, knows no North and 
South, no East and West, but one common country to be 
blessed with the best means of Christian culture, we beg you 
to bear back to your venerable university cordial congratula- 
tions and an earnest godspeed from her younger sister 
Roanoke. 

I may not omit, in this presence, to tender to you, my es- 
teemed colleagues of the Faculty, the assurances of my grate- 
ful recognition and appreciation of your unselfish devotion to 
the welfare of the College. For your personal kindness, con- 
sideration, and earnest cooperation, I thank you most profoundly. 
To two of your number, as my former professors, I am bound 



59 

by the grateful memories of my own student-life ; to others of 
your number, by the ties of brotherhood in this our Alma 
Mater: to you^ all, as friends, by the ■ holiest considerations of 
duty as fellow- workers for the success of the object of our com- 
mon affection. It is pleasing, in this hour, to look forward to 
such intercourse in congenial labors, with the confidence that 
harmony and cooperation, zeal and fidelity, will continue to pre- 
vail in our counsels, and crown our efforts with success. 

To you, gentlemen of the Alumni, I come with this mes- 
sage : Roanoke expects every man to do his duty. After the first 
twenty-five years of its history, a college must depend more 
upon its Alumni than upon all others for success. The repre- 
sentatives of the literary training given here, you speak the 
praises of your Alma Mater by the faithful discharge of your 
trusts in public and private life. She looks to you not only for 
dutiful affection, but also for that dutiful service, which she has a 
right to expect from every one of her sons. George Fox said 
that, ''a zealous Friend ought to shake the earth for ten miles 
around him in behalf of his church " ; so may we say that an 
earnest Alumnus ought to shake the country for twenty miles 
around him in behalf of his college. In all their efforts to ele- 
vate the standard of scholarship and to extend the fair fame 
and usefulness of this seat of letters, the Trustees and Faculty 
will have to rely upon you as their most efficient allies. And 
may I not, as a brother Alumnus, expect your sympathy and 
encouragement in every sincere endeavor to discharge the 
onerous duties of the responsible position to which the Trustees 
have called me t Your enthusiastic and unfailing devotion in 
the past is the sure pledge of an affection that promises even 
greater things in the years to come. 

Young gentlemen, students of Roanoke College, the cere- 
monies of this day derive their significance from the fact that 
you are here in quest of knowledge, and that you will be followed 
in successive years by bands of noble youth in search of the 
best preparation for life. Young men thus engaged in the pur- 



6o 



suit of science and literature are usually animated by generous 
impulses, lofty aims, and manly and patriotic sentiments. In 
the midst of such inspiring associations, my life has thus far 
been passed ; and this evening the painful sense of the weighty 
responsibilities imposed upon me, is somewhat relieved by the 
reflection that my work is to be among young men, and by the 
hope, so earnestly cherished, that you will accept, in the kind 
spirit in which they are intended, the humble efforts! bring to 
your service. With the memories of my own college days still 
fresh in my mind, I can enter fully into sympathy with your 
academic life ; and, with the knowledge gained from a varied 
experience and a somewhat extended observation, I trust that 
my earnest desire to aid you, to the best of my ability, in 
the attainment of an honorable success in life, may meet with 
reasonable fulfillment. 

Roanoke College is your servant. For you have these 
buildings been erected, the collections made, the grounds 
adorned, and a new Library Hall this day dedicated. For you 
have the Trustees been appointed and the Faculty constituted. 
These all wait on you. Their purpose is to be of service in 
fitting aspiring youths for the duties of life. But much will 
depend upon the daily use you make of these opportunities. 
These days of enjoyment should be made also a period of im- 
provement. For, as a beautiful writer has said, " Each day is 
a little life ; and our whole life is but a day repeated." Your 
college ^^life, however you may regard it, is the measuring-line 
of your future career. As the boy foreshadows the man, so does 
the brief span passed here stretch out and cover the whole of 
the larger life before you. You need no soothsayer to allure 
you by professing to tell your fortune. You are doing that every 
day, each one for himself. You will be exactly what you make 
yourselves — that, and nothing else. ** Success treads on the 
heels of every right effort," and fortune smiles on those who 
deserve her smiles. That is what is meant by the motto of this 
College, '' Pahnam quam meruit , ferat,'\^h.ic\\, freely rendered, 
is simply this : Let each one have zvhat he deserves. Be sure, 
then, that you have deserved success, before you look beyond 



6i 



yourself for the cause of failure. There is a world of sad truth 
in the following lines, written, as they were, for the title-page 
of his own biography by one who recognized in himself the 
cause of his repeated failures : — 

" Look into the lives of .those who are unfortunate called, 
And closer viewed, you'll find they are to blame." 

There is one sublime word which I would give you as your 
guide — your pole-star in the journey of life. That word is duty. 
As you love it, you will be happy and useful ; as you neglect it, 
miserable and worthless. The great Roman orator has justly 
observed that '' No part of life . . . can be separated from the 
idea of duty: in the performance of this consists all the honor, 
and in the neglect of this, all the disgrace of life." And thus 
have taught the good and the great of all ages. In every con- 
dition and circumstance of life, therefore, let your sense of 
duty dictate your course of action, and you need not then stop 
to reckon the cost. Let the result be what it may, you have 
done best when you have done your duty. 

What was said by one of the Greek poets ought to be the 
language of every student's heart : — 

" I seek what's to be sought, 
I learn what's to be taught, 
I beg the rest of heaven ; " 

for, young gentlemen, after all your seeking and learning, you 
will need, most of all, that wisdom of which Solomon speaks : 
*' When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is 
pleasant unto thy soul ; discretion shall preserve thee, under- 
standing shall keep thee, to deliver thee from the way of evil." 

Citizens of Salem and Roanoke, it is a matter of felicita- 
tion to me that my life-work is to be among those whose kind- 
ness and hospitality added so much to the enjoyment of my 
college days ; whose friendly interest and support, I trust, will 
not be wanting in aid of the institution that claims my devotion 
and my labors. Roanoke College is a blessing to you, materially, 



62 



intellectually, morally, and religiously ; it is a blessing to the 
State and to our country at large. All the considerations, 
therefore, of self-interest, benevolence, patriotism, and Christian 
duty, prompt you to give the authorities of the College your 
hearty, moral and pecuniary support in their efforts for the pro- 
motion of learning, good morals, and religion. The College is 
fortunate in its location in this lovely valley of the Roanoke, 
deservedly noted for its unrivaled mountain scenery, its fertile 
soil, its healthful climate, and, above all, for the high character 
of a brave, virtuous, and intelligent population. Pledging to 
you our best endeavors for the promotion of the true interests 
of this town and county and the grand old Commonwealth of 
Virginia, we throw ourselves upon your generous considerations, 
and confidently expect your hearty encouragement and efficient 
cooperation. 

And now, friends all, I have done. To Him by whom are 
all things, for whom are all things, whose we are and whom we 
serve, let us raise our Te Deum Laudamus for His help hitherto ; 
dedicate to Him anew this seat of learning and Christian cul- 
ture ; and earnestly invoke a continuance of His favor and 
blessing. 



Frank Wood, Primtbr, Boston. 



yBRARY OF CONGRESS ] " 

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